The Political Discussion Thread

[Coco Pops]

So now the australian government wants to ramp up police powers and such to allow them to crack encryption on anyone's phone if they are suspicious of you and of course guess what the excuse for this is. Not terrorism but P and T

Pedophillia and terrorism is the excuse... They always have to lump the two together.


https://www.itnews.com.au/news/apple...tralian-513893

and

https://redflag.org.au/node/6562

[Gatefan1976]

So now the australian government wants to ramp up police powers and such to allow them to crack encryption on anyone's phone if they are suspicious of you and of course guess what the excuse for this is. Not terrorism but P and T

Pedophillia and terrorism is the excuse... They always have to lump the two together.


https://www.itnews.com.au/news/apple...tralian-513893

and

https://redflag.org.au/node/6562

What do you expect from a LNP proposal?

[Annoyed]

So now the australian government wants to ramp up police powers and such to allow them to crack encryption on anyone's phone if they are suspicious of you and of course guess what the excuse for this is. Not terrorism but P and T

Pedophillia and terrorism is the excuse... They always have to lump the two together.


https://www.itnews.com.au/news/apple...tralian-513893

and

https://redflag.org.au/node/6562

Wow. That is some nasty proposal. I don't even see any mention of warrants being required. And whatever decryption tool they force on them will no doubt be available to bad guys shortly after this starts.

Maybe Apple and others ought to just pull out of that market. Or maybe consumers should just stop buying these things.

[Gatefan1976]

I advocate the strongest military that we can possibly field, because if you don't have that, you don't get to make all the other choices. Put another way, the most expensive army in the world is the one that comes in 2nd place. Only through being strong enough so that no one will dare challenge us can we have peace and freedom at the same time.

The US military could squash every single military in a one to one situation by orders of excessive magnitude, shifting some of that spending to actually taking care of it's people via health, education or infrastructure would not impact that ability at all. An all powerful military can buy you -protection-, nothing more and if you disagree, ask the last great republic that sunk everything into it's military (that would be Rome in case you were wondering)
While you are at it, ask how the republic fared after it did that.

Today, a great deal of the cost of that military is high-tech, whiz-bang toys that improve the odds of our servicemen living through it; Drones so they don't have enter the danger zone at all, precision weapons, armor and such. I have no problem spending taxpayer dollars to improve the odds for our servicepeople.

Do you think that makes you a patriot?
Do you know what stops servicemen and women from getting killed at all?
Keeping your military pants on and not waving your junk around at everyone.

Psychotic uncle Annoyed takes care of himself just fine, thank you.

Himself, yes.

More seriously, why do you think I favor protectionist trade policies?

Because you do not understand macroeconomics.

For example, Democrats want to mandate $ 15/Hr. min wage. With "free trade", what is to stop employers from moving those jobs out of the jurisdiction?

Nothing, but if they are service industries, they loose their customer base.

Here's a micro example. Government mandates on small businesses have been driving pizza franchises out of the area around here. Pizza Hut? Gone. Papa John's ? Gone. Within delivery range of my home, there is only one decent Pizza joint still in operation. My choice as a consumer is limited to that place.

That's not a micro example, its a "Boo-hoo for me" example, and has absolutely nothing to do with the economy.
I have around 5 "cheapy pizza" and 2 upper scale pizza places within a 5 minute drive from me, and they all survive, even while having to pay MORE than 15 bucks an hour for their staff unless they are employing 15 year olds.

What happened to the jobs of all the employees of the places that decided that govt. was too onerous here and closed?

The government DIDN'T make that decision, the CORPORATIONS did. Do you expect the government to bow down to corporate greed?

Blow that up to a larger scale. If the govt. mandates unsustainable wage rates and the companies affected can move production to a lower cost nation, they will. We've seen this over and over.

There is a limited pool of jobs you can shift "outside of country", and those jobs are already shifted out, and have been for years, it's not a "new thing" annoyed.

But, if you require that the products sold here be made here, they can't do that. Requiring domestic production will use market forces (supply and demand) to force wages up, as employers have to compete for workers.

Do you realise you are not talking about protectionism here?
Do you realise you are destroying a major tenant of capitalism here?

The people who benefit the most from free trade are the well-off. Which, just coincidentally are the people who finance the political campaigns of both Democrats and conventional Republicans.

You really do not understand how trade works, nor the concept of "free" in political or economic terms.
Free does NOT mean "without cost", it means "open and available"

Whereas Trump alone advocates protectionism.

Cause he is as dumb as a box of rocks, and his version of protection is "protect what is mine"
Hell, it's not even WHAT is his, it's what he PERCIEVES SHOULD be his.
He does not give one hard toss about you, or anyone.

The idea of The People's Republic of NY not giving the farm away in the first place, and therefore not having to having damned near the highest taxes in the country never enters your mind, does it?

They are not giving the farm away, they are doing what you do in a pack and your pack happens to include some sicky, diseased wolves that shoud have been shot years ago.

[Annoyed]

So nice to see a Democrat screw up & admit the truth!

Go get 'em, Chuckie!

Trump is right about biased judges; Schumer acknowledges 'highly political' rulings

And, as a bonus, we get him talking out of both sides of his arse, too.

Schumer piled on, criticizing President Trump in a Friday tweet: “I don’t agree very often with Chief Justice Roberts, especially his partisan decisions which seem highly political …. But I am thankful today that he – almost alone among Republicans – stood up to President Trump and for an independent judiciary.”

[Annoyed]

The US military could squash every single military in a one to one situation by orders of excessive magnitude, shifting some of that spending to actually taking care of it's people via health, education or infrastructure would not impact that ability at all. An all powerful military can buy you -protection-, nothing more and if you disagree, ask the last great republic that sunk everything into it's military (that would be Rome in case you were wondering)
While you are at it, ask how the republic fared after it did that.

And if we have to fight 5-6 or more at the same time? In the schoolyard, it's not uncommon for several others to join forces to take down the king of the hill.

I have around 5 "cheapy pizza" and 2 upper scale pizza places within a 5 minute drive from me, and they all survive, even while having to pay MORE than 15 bucks an hour for their staff unless they are employing 15 year olds.

The government DIDN'T make that decision, the CORPORATIONS did. Do you expect the government to bow down to corporate greed?

So, in your eyes, it's perfectly fine to treat businesses as cash cows? If the govt. takes too much, why shouldn't they move out?

[aretood2]

And if we have to fight 5-6 or more at the same time? In the schoolyard, it's not uncommon for several others to join forces to take down the king of the hill.


So, in your eyes, it's perfectly fine to treat businesses as cash cows? If the govt. takes too much, why shouldn't they move out?

If we go to war with all 7 Central American nations one aircraft carrier task force is more than enough to destroy their military capabilities and reduce their infrastructure to rubble with little to no risk. It took what? Two days iirc to tople Iraq's military? And that was a highly militarized nation too. Occupying it was a different matter entirely, and the British learned that the hard way with the Zulu as we did with Vietnam...or rather failed to learn.

If it is about self defense we really have nothing to fear from any nation's military (except maybe nukes but multi billion dollar fighter craft can't stop those, neither can $10,000 hammers). The only nations that can realistically make it to our shores are Canada, Mexico, UK, and France. The first two because well...duh. Okay, maybe Cuba could manage to land some troops on Florida or Puerto Rico if they get lucky.

So unless we are picking a fight with China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia combined and we have forsaken our allies, that scenario of yours is very very unlikely. We have a better shot at FTL travel in the next ten years basically.

That said, anyone keeping track of Representative Elect Ocasio-Cortez's twitter use and Fox's obsession with her? It's really the coolest thing ever to read up on. She really knows how to shoot back at detractors.

[Coco Pops]

Wow. That is some nasty proposal. I don't even see any mention of warrants being required. And whatever decryption tool they force on them will no doubt be available to bad guys shortly after this starts.

Maybe Apple and others ought to just pull out of that market. Or maybe consumers should just stop buying these things.

That won't ever happen....... People camp all night for the latest Apple phone it's become a religion.

But even the USA has similar laws on their books, you guys never revoked the patriot act and that goes a lot further.

[Coco Pops]

Video about the politics of why the space shuttle ended.


Some of the comments are horrible. Sad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-uxmp6ok8I

The most depressing thing here are the comments. What kind of education did these people get?

[Gatefan1976]

And if we have to fight 5-6 or more at the same time? In the schoolyard, it's not uncommon for several others to join forces to take down the king of the hill.

This is a laughably stupid analogy, as Tood explained.

So, in your eyes, it's perfectly fine to treat businesses as cash cows? If the govt. takes too much, why shouldn't they move out?

What do you think the top end executives and shareholders use them as?

[Annoyed]

What do you think the top end executives and shareholders use them as?

Difference is that they are the owners of the business, and have the right to do so.

You start a business and you have the right to use your business as a cash cow, too.

[Chaka-Z0]

Difference is that they are the owners of the business, and have the right to do so.

You start a business and you have the right to use your business as a cash cow, too.

In most cases, the ''owners'' of those businesses are not the guys who started it. As a matter of fact, most of the biggest corporations of this world don't have their ''original creator'' involved in the business at all anymore.

[SoulReaver]

You start a business and you have the right to use your business as a cash cow, too.

and use your workers as cows too?

[Annoyed]

In most cases, the ''owners'' of those businesses are not the guys who started it. As a matter of fact, most of the biggest corporations of this world don't have their ''original creator'' involved in the business at all anymore.

Correct, usually the original creator sells it. But the new owners are still the owners.

[Chaka-Z0]

Correct, usually the original creator sells it. But the new owners are still the owners.

So you agree that businesses are literal cash cows and should be milked as often as possible?